Still Talking About Digital Transformation? You’re a Decade Too Late

Call me cynical… but I no longer have time for all this talk with little action.

I just turned 50. You could say I gained a fresh perspective.

But with 2024, I know what’s coming…

Cue the predictions, cue the trends, cue the jargon. We’re going to see a lot of people telling us to focus on X, Y and Z in the coming months before we reassess our strategies.

(I’ll probably be one of them).

But we’re entering an age where warnings and calls to action will be outrun by actual forecasts playing out. Everything happens at speed: the crises we’re facing, the solutions we’re developing and the behaviour that we’re exhibiting.

Awareness isn’t enough. 

2024 won’t favour the leaders who know what needs to be done. It will favour the leaders who act on what they know. 

And speed will be the great divider between the companies that survive and those that die.

Transformation Won’t be a Warning Soon

I feel a lot of talk about digital transformation started to change last year.

The reason: GenAI

It was the trending topic for 12 months and its popularity still hasn’t died out. 

Suddenly, if you’re still having conversations about moving from analogue to digital… man, then you’re CENTURIES behind. The AI hype appeared to be an announcement to the world that being digital should have been intuitive to us by now. Because now there’s a tool that will supercharge this intuition.

A year later, our world looks like this: if you aren’t thinking and working alongside GenAI to meet your business goals, then you can ask ChatGPT to write your company’s eulogy…

You may not survive the pace of innovation that’s coming.

67% of companies are using AI already. Gartner has placed AI at the top of its hype curve which will soon see the normalisation of its adoption. Not to mention companies are exploring other variants of AI to meet their business prospects.

It’s interesting what’s making the adoption of the tool bottleneck. 

• The uncertainty about the success of business outcomes
• The safety involved in trusting AI with sensitive information
• The ethics by which AI operates and its impact on fairness and bias
• The costs involved for implementation time, effort and resources.
• The clear lack of AI-centric skills and knowledge to assist in using it.

But don’t these problems look familiar? This isn’t the first time concerns around security, ethics, new models or talent gaps have arisen. They existed long before AI.

Now these same problems are delaying a new resource. One that has revamped the way early adopters approach their businesses. 

Many are stuck in the same pattern. And talks of transformation up to this point haven’t made the difference we hoped to see. 

Progress paralysis is still real. But perhaps it is because use cases of AI aren’t being positioned to show people all the practical benefits. We’re telling people to adapt or die. 

But is anyone teaching them the art of survival?

Practicality is Key to Changed Mindsets

This newsletter is not a frustrated musing. 

Instead, I want to coax anyone reading this to help and contribute to the solution.

We need businesses to practically embrace AI. But to do that, they need to be sure they can mitigate the risks involved.

Ultimately, leaders from all functions will want key questions answered:

• How do you meet consumer demand at pace when the core systems start changing?
• How do you cut costs when options for sustainable alternatives are expensive?
• How do you become more transparent with data without the risk of breaches or hacking?
• How do you reskill/upskill employees who have never used a crucial new tool before?
• How do you keep shipping costs down when major trade routes become risky?

(The last bullet is an especially rising concern as Shipping giant Maersk suspended its trade through the Red Sea)

All valid questions. And answers we should be focusing on, instead of beating a tired horse to death by telling people what they need to do.

We need to show them HOW to do it. And also how to avoid all their risks and concerns simultaneously. It’s the only way to guarantee a buy-in.

The words “new normal” don’t apply here any more. We’re beyond that already. We’ve been living it for years. And to be honest, I’d like anyone to show me a single year recently that hasn’t presented its own screwed-up version of normality. 

No one expected the 2 major geopolitical conflicts we’ve seen in the past 2 years alone. Conflicts have had massive ramifications for supply chains globally as available resources, logistics and trade agreements needed reconsidering.

There is one thing we need to make peace with: Our reality is complex. Our reality is challenging. Our reality is filled with competing forces and dichotomies. And it’s changing the rules all the time.

We need to constantly be in the habit of DOING to just keep up.

But we need the experts to show us how.

A Rallying Call

I am devoted to one mission this year.

Collaborating with others to position stories with action.

Working with people and companies that have figured out:

• Curbing concerns around physical and cybersecurity
• Maintaining the humanity in ESG/diversity/fairness/inclusion
• Leadership management in an age of transitions
• Overcoming the dwindling availability of raw materials
• Sourcing the skills and talent needed for the digital age
• Staying customer-centric while adopting change

Many leaders (across all functions) need your stories to escape their complacency traps and paralysis. 

But we can’t rely on the jargon attached to transformation to accomplish that. We need to put them in touch with the stories that ACTUALLY work.

If you can tell them, I would love to add you to my network as a voice of transformation.

Supply chain needs you!